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Daltry Calhoun * Katrina Holden Bronson * 2005

Tarantino, Johnny Knoxville, Juliette Lewis, I felt for it. The title seems to be “Daltry” in Europe (or at least the Netherlands) and “Daltry Calhoun” in the USA. The film is the first of Bronson who also seems to be a beginning actress. Still Tarantino decided to co-produce her film (the reason he could be put on the front of the box), which may also explain why names such as Knoxville, Lewis or Elizabeth Banks joined the club. The obvious and prejudiced expectation with these names and a genre “comedy”, is a violent comedy in the Tarantino style. Nothing like that in Bronson’s film! Knoxville and Lewis prove that they can really act, the story is simple and charming, the humour subtle and the atmosphere a bit dreamlike. I had to think of “Big Fish” when watching this film, even when it is completely different. Knoxville is a far too young father, who is kicked out of his mothers house and leaves his wife and daughter. He decides to start a new and better life and begins a very successfull grass-growing company. 15 Years later his ex and daughter look him up. A nice film. Different than expected, but of course it is only nice to be surprised sometimes and find your prejudices to be false.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon * Ang Lee * 2000

It seems that everybody who sees this movie, likes it. I didn’t, not really. “Crouching Tiger” is a Chinese movie with martial arts and “Matrix-like-filming” (read “flying fighters”). Personally I get a bit tired of people walking against walls and ceilings, but especially when they start flying from roof to roof, it gets a bit too much for me. Conclusion: a family film about Chinese fighters looking for a magical sword.

I am much more curious about the upcoming film “Iron Monkey” which seems to be “Crouching Tiger” in a serious version.

Il Conformista * Bernardo Bertolucci * 1970

An old Italian film about the times that Hitler started to reign over Germany and Mussolini over Italy. The film is about an Italian secret agent who became a fascist at a quite early age. He marries a naive young woman in his aim to become ‘normal’. Their honeymoon is to Paris, but Marcello’s actual assignment is not pleasure, but the assassination of his old philosophy-teacher Quadri who fleed Italy when the fascists took over power. The professor’s wife is Anna Quadri old love who also enchants Giulia, Marcello’s wife. Eventually the killing of both the professor and his wife take place, Giulia finds out at around the end of the film the fascist regime falls and Marcello looses his conviction.
An old film, eh? Not too great.

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind * George Clooney * 2002

The second Charlie Kaufman script (also see “Adaptation”) is also a book put to film. This time it is Chuck Barris’ biography. “Confessions…” is the directors-debut of George Clooney and he is obviously quite influenced by the brothers Coen is whose “O Brother Where Art Thou?” (2000) he played. “Confessions…” first has a similar atmosphere to this Coen film and also their “The Man Who Wasn’t There”.

As said “Confessions…” is about Chuck Barris, the man who came up with the first tv-shows like “The Dating Game” and “The Gong Show”. First you see him in his early days desperately looking for sex. When the tv is introduced, he immediately sees the future in this media and starts at ABC. He comes up with some of the most popular gameshows ever. In the meantime he is recruited as special murder-agent for the CIA by Jim Byrd (played by Clooney himself) and while the film continues, Barris starts to combine his two occupations, but eventually goes insane when his tv-carreer jams and the pressure by the CIA rises.

In the beginning “Confessions…” has a very nice 50/60’ies atmosphere with a subtle kind of humour like we know from the brothers Coen. As the film continues there are very strange and even dark scenes and here and there thrillerish elements. The atmosphere is never forced and goes naturally from one to the other. The colour-setting is very nice, black/white but then green. The ‘setup’ is a bit weird like we may expect from Kaufman. It is both a biography (Barris looking back at his life) and a documentary (with interviews with ex-colleagues etc.). Overall I found this film pretty impressive. It is not brilliant the whole time, but especially for a directors-debut this is close to a masterpiece. <4>

La Classe De Neige * Claude Miller * 1998

“La Classe De Neige” (“snow class”) is a French film that is compared to the brilliant “The Butcher Boy” by Neil Jordan (1997). Indeed both films are about unwordly young boys living in a violent fantasy world. Where “The Butcher Boy” is a grim comedy “La Classe De Neige” is more of a drama.
Nicholas is a boy with an over protective father and will go to the mountains with his school class to sky. His father doesn’t trust the bus-driver and wants to bring Nicholas himself. The boy leaves his bag in his father’s car and shy as he is, he has to loan pyjamas from a class-mate. This is the wild Hodkann but different as they are, they become friends. Nicholas has frightening visions/dreams and a vivid imagination and just as his head must seem, it is hard to tell what is truely happening and what is only inside Nicholas’ head. All over the film suggestions are made about the boy’s father, but only at the very end you will get to know if Hodkann’s suspicions are correct.
All in all a nice movie, but I like “The Butcher Boy” better.

Charlotte Gray * Gillian Armstrong * 2001

Hm, Cate Blanchett even got me to watch a war-movie, a genre I am not fond off. I thought the story was different when I rented this film. Anyway, Charlotte Gray is a Brittish woman who used to study in Paris. In WWII her boyfriend -who is a pilot- goes down in France and Gray voluntarily leaves her own country to try to help to win the war as secret agent in France. Some not too sensational adventures take place. I think this film wants to show how a normal person tried to help in the war and did not come out too heroic. Not that this is a boring film by the way, but it is just a drama.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory * Tim Burton * 2005

This film has on my wish-list for a while, Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, always a nice combination. Since this is a kids-film the priority wasn’t too high. The film was as expected. Burton of course filmed the famous book by Roald Dahl which I don’t think I ever read. There is a mysterious chocolate factory in a small town and five kids are allowed to have a peak inside. Director Willy Wonka (Depp) leads the kids and one family member each through the fantasyfull factory with invention-rooms, rivers of chocolate (and of course the waterfall), Oompa-Loompa helpers, etc. etc. Well, this is something that you can leave to Tim Burton to make! The factory looks great, the characters are weird and the film is very entertaining balancing on the edge of ‘over-the-topness’. There is even some moral put in the film for all the kids (and their parents) who watch it; one kid is a glutton, the next a bitch/know-it-all, a striver and TV-gamefreak and then of course the good kid Charlie who wins the special price. No need to rush to the stores to get this film if you have no kids, but if you like Tim Burton, be sure to see this one some time too.

C’est Arrivé Près De Chez Vous * Remy Belvaux / André Bonzel / Benoît Poelvoorde * 1992

I have seen this film a long time ago. I only knew it under the American title. The French title means something like “It has come to you too”, so where does ‘Man Bites Dog’ from? The film is slightly ‘Blair Witchy’. You see the result of a documentary that three young people made about a philosophical and poetic serial killer. They filmed his normal life and his killings. Benoît mostly kills for money (and all of his friends and relatives know that), but also for pleasure. All this is shown quite explicitly. There are funny moments, sometimes the violence is shown a bit in ‘the Tarantino way’ (hard but funny), sometimes more like ‘Funny Games’. Especially this last fact makes this a good film, but not a nice film to watch. Just like with ‘Funny Games’ (of Michael Haneke) this film makes you wonder why you actually watch a violent film like this. Actually it is good when a film does that!

Casshern * Kazuaki Kiriya * 2004

However this film may be ‘the Japanese Sin City’ (it is also a film made of a comic), the approach is quite different. Still, also in “Casshern” there are computer stages, weird colours, etc., but the persons look more human than in “Sin City” and “Casshern” is a lot darker (yes, a lot darker than “Sin City”), but also a lot more ‘bombastic’. I don’t quite follow the logic in the film (do Japanese have another sense of logic?), but the story is something like this: in the future Asia has conquered the European lands and formed a big empire. There is rebellion in one of the European parts of “Eurasia” and an ongoing war. A professor discovers a new gene-technology that should make it easy to ‘repair damaged soldiers’, since he can breed hands and limbs, etc. This experiment runs out of hand and mutants walk out of the laboratory. These mutants call themselves ‘neo-sapiens’ and decide to take revenge on the human race. A massive war with some ‘supernatural’ elements is caused.
The film begins a bit dreamy with bright colours and a strange atmosphere that reminds me a bit of the Japanese film “Dolls” (reviewed elsewhere). The war scenes are very grim and depressive (but not too good) and especially when the war between the mutants and mankind begins, the film gets very dark. The director obviously wants to show the crazyness and futility of war and to show that the battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is not as black-and-white as you may think. As in other Eastern films there are long ‘philosophical’ scenes about why mankind always makes war, etc. The film is sometimes quite realistic, here and there you get 2-dimensional comic scenes, but most of the time there are over-the-top stages with bright colours, comic action and weird characters. The film is overwhelming, but with the grim atmosphere not a pleasant watch. Also with the confusing story (who is who, what is happening?) I definately need to watch this film again, maybe it will make a bit more sense. But “Casshern” (which means ‘guardian angel’ by the way) surely isn’t the average film and also I think it is not (like “Sin City”) for the big audience. Watch it and be surprised by the weirdness of Japanese filmmaking!

Carnivàle (series) season 1 * Daniel Knauf * 2003-

I remember when these series were introduced on the Dutch television. Quite a big anouncement and my interest was raised enough to watch it. I am not good at following series on TV, so somewhere in the second half I missed an episode, later another, then I dropped out. I liked the series. They are not comparable in magnificence to Twin Peaks which name is often mentioned, but it was a nice watch. For years I had the idea to watch them on DVD some time. That apparently took four years!
Carnivàle (as you probably know) is about a travelling circus. The “route” goes through the deserts of central and southern Northern America which immediately sets the atmosphere for the series: barren, desolate and grim. The atmosphere is rather dark for such a big series and the characters are as weird as they are collourfull. A comateus tarrot card reader, a bearded lady, a reptile man, a blind clairvoyant, a tiny director (a great role by Michael Anderson, the dwarf from Twin Peaks’ red room), an invisible “management”. A young man is picked up, Ben Hawkins, a man with a strange gift/curse. He “was not picked up for no reason” and this is what the series are about. A very nice watch for sure if you enjoy the non-average TV entertainment and can stand a grim atmosphere and halucinative scenes. A series for Twin Peaks fans maybe, but believe me, Twin Peaks is 10x better and I can’t wait for the second series to be available. The second series of Carnivàle are already available and the end of the first series prove that this is not a sequel because of a successfull series, but it was always intended to be a multi-series series. I have no idea if there are plans for a third series. I hope not! Canivàle is nice, but a second series will probably already be on the edge of cow-milking. I think I might watch that second series though… sometimes (maybe when I know if there will be more series!). For the time being, if you haven’t seen Carnivàle yet, the 12x 45 to 55 minutes on the couch are worth it.